One Mapping Service to Rule Them All

MapStory can give users the tools to map the growth of every municipality in the world.

A map that shows the growth of New York City from 1626 to the present day tells a lot of stories about American history. How the Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam became the English colony of New York, only to be recaptured and renamed Nieuw-Orange. How the great manors of New York were incorporated into cities. And how the cities of New York and Brooklyn (formerly Breucklyn) grew by annexation until they were consolidated as with Long Island, Queens, and Staten Island.

In fact, the purpose of MapStory is to make this work easier. Mapping out the growth of New York City over time—indeed, the growth of every municipality in New York State—is just a means to one end. MapStory aims to give users the means to map the development of every municipality on the planet.

That audacity earned MapStory an OpenGov grant from the Sunlight Foundation. "Our initial motivation was to support urban historians and genealogists who need to know this information but who currently spend inordinate amounts of time searching historic maps and city records for it," wrote MapStory's John Vincent and Karl R. Phillips on a post on Sunlight's blog. "In the digital age, citizens should be able to ask and immediately answer this simple question: How has the geography of my city/town/borough/village changed throughout its history?"

MapStory caught my eye earlier this week when someone passed along a MapStory map charting the growth of Portland over time. That means that users are taking MapStory beyond its initial goals of mapping the states of New York and also California, where they've collected data for a whole mess of that state's cities.

Mapping the entire world may be a ways off. But recent developments—such as the 2013 ruling by the California Supreme Court that California government GIS databases are public records—makes the data more accessible all the time. MapStory is a repository of examples of the uses those data can be put toward, from class assignments to deep history projects.